The three-day “Bended Realities“ festival (03.-05.06.2016) offers lectures, concerts, exhibitions and workshops for the exploration of experimental digital culture. This years theme is- BLACK TO THE FUTURE

Fundamental rights are being restricted in order to defend liberties, new wars are started to end terror. Countries and corporations compete over the remains of private and economic spheres. Climate protection becomes a matter of reactive damage control. The polar ice caps are melting, refugees surge, and conspiracy theorists promise salvation by putting up higher walls. In social networks the discourse meanwhile becomes limited to either mutual affirmation or filtering of dissenting views. Truly, the end is nigh, dark ages loom ahead, black hats and comprehensive surveillance become mass-compatible.

Science-fiction addicted members of the digital scenes and nerd cultures have always worshipped apocalyptic dystopias anyway. Some style-setting works of the gloomy 1980s cyberpunk era can appear like “fan-fulfilled“ prophecies nowadays. The ever-alluring “dark side of the Force“ is a popular quotation: And so the self-image of the digital worker fluctuates between heroic underground hacker and a well-paid job at one of the software giants – or a Trojan-developing company for security technology. “Come to the dark side, we´ve got cookies“.

High time we had a look at our post-Orwellian reality and its (science)fictional foreshadowings! Otherwise we might overlook the next impending disaster, or worse, miss out on a good film. Everything you always wanted to know about the dark side of the Force, or: Black to the Future!

The programme consists of: – Concerts and performances – Workshops, discussions – Lectures and technical demonstrations – Films – Artistic approaches to the subject Lectures and workshops will take place in rooms of the HfG, concerts and performances at the Waggon. Apocalyptical ideas, hacks, works of art, lectures, sounds & performances wanted!B